


oh!!! this wonderful life

by counterheist



Series: Yuuri Week 2017 [2]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harvest Moon, Anxious Katsuki Yuuri, Day 2, Dogs, Fluff, Gen, Insomnia, M/M, Theme: Animals/Pets, Theme: Friends and Family, Yuuri Week 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 18:29:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11606442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/counterheist/pseuds/counterheist
Summary: He wasn't unhappy. But he didn't seem to have a direction in life.A Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life AU.





	oh!!! this wonderful life

When Yuuri sleeps, he dreams of tiny sprites dressed in bright colors coming into his home. They do his chores and feed his dog, and then they spend the rest of the night sitting on the braided blue rug across from his bed, staring at him silently. Ergo, Yuuri doesn’t sleep much. He drinks at the Blue Bar until Chris starts to make noises about even the beautiful needing beauty sleep. He wanders down the length of the village’s only street, alone save for the cicadas and his thoughts. He fishes in the river as the moon rises and sets behind him.

He waits for the sun to rise.

Sunrises are delayed in the Matsuura Valley because of the mountains to the east that separate it from the rest of the prefecture, from the world. Yuuri sees most of them begin and grow and fade away into the misty morning, and that would be completely normal for a farmer, for Yuuri to also see those mornings burn into afternoons that drifty hazily down into pink-tinged sunsets, except Yuuri also sees the middle of the night, the sky darker than purple, darker than black except for the thousands of millions of stars. The stars are more plentiful in the night sky over Ariura Village than the fish are in the river that runs through it; partially because of the mountains, but mostly because the village only has a handful of inhabitants left to it.

Ariura only has one electric lamppost, the tall grey one on the main road between the bar and the inn. The prefecture installed it as an afterthought when Matsuura district officially dropped down to only one town, after Kitahata decided to merge into nearby Hasetsu and the eight other villages that had previously dotted the mountains and the coast all decided to follow it.

Yuuri was born in Hasetsu. He took a hodgepodge of courses through the Agriculture Faculty at Kyushu University in Fukuoka in his first year there and fell in love, loved ecology and botany and genetics and thought _this is my future_.

He’s always liked the outdoors.

He’s always been a clever gardener.

He’s always been a second child.

Mari teased him on his graduation day that he subconsciously had done whatever he could to get out of being her subordinate at the inn for the rest of his life. She ruffled his hair and poked his tummy through his uncomfortable, starched suit, and promised to buy him a beer when they got home. Yuuri’s parents had smiled and clapped and congratulated him, but he couldn’t read them or what they thought about him moving all the way to Hokkaido for his postgraduate work.

As far as places in Japan go, Hasetsu isn’t very big. Yuuri followed the normal progression for a non-inheriting son from a tourist town in the first 24 years of his life: he left Hasetsu for the city, he left Fukuoka for the rest of Japan. He worked and worked and worked, alone in the north, until his mother’s old school friend came to visit him one day, as a side trip on her way to finish up other business. Auntie Minako brought Yuuri dried fish and cakes from his mother, news from his father, and a wry demand he visit more often from his sister. She also brought an opportunity.

Auntie Minako had a farm in Ariura. Auntie Minako wanted to retire from working on her farm in Ariura. Auntie Minako was looking to lease her farm in Ariura.

Now Yuuri has a farm in Ariura.

Ariura is a distinct turn from the 24 typical years Yuuri has been living.

People leave Ariura.

Young people, in particular, leave Ariura.

Yuuri can feel the weight of an entire village’s stare on his shoulders on that first morning when Auntie Minako’s truck slows down at the edge of her property, slows and stops, and he opens the door to Ariura for the very first time. The fields are overgrown with weeds, the pastures are simply overgrown. Auntie Minako promises him she has some seeds left, and one old cow speckled black and white. She has all the catalogues and supplier relationships to get Yuuri whatever he wants to build Okukawa Family Farm back to its former glory. He only has to decide what he wants, and ask.

On that first day Yuuri works himself to exhaustion clearing stumps out of the back pasture. He falls asleep in the chair next to the only table in his single-room home on the north end of the property, away from the larger house Auntie Minako kept for herself on the west corner.

This is one of the last good sleeps Yuuri has for a long time.

* * *

“He says he’s not unhappy and I believe him.”

“Are you sure, Minako-senpai?”

“I am. But is he happy? No. No, I don’t think so.”

“He has been working so hard…”

“Without direction it doesn’t matter how hard you work. You still end up nowhere.”

* * *

There are few enough people in Ariura that the single paved road that winds along the side of the mountain and dips down to kiss the sea provides access to most of the homes and all of the businesses. The rest of the village is connected by dirt paths and the swift trails of gossip that can hop across the valley faster than any other mode of transportation.

Yuuri first came to the valley in the spring, just after having his paper denied by four journals and losing his funding and moving back in with his parents. Just after the new year celebrations.

It’s deep into summer now, and warm even at three in the morning on the footbridge over the river where Yuuri likes to fish when he doesn’t want to lie in bed and wonder if hallucinations – sprites! Mountain sprites _aren’t real_! – are a better alternative to pondering how he’s going nowhere and taking everything Auntie Minako’s ever worked for with him.

The farm is doing fine, Auntie Minako says every time she sees him. Yuuri, the farm is doing fine. Maybe he’ll believe her next year. Maybe a year is all it will take.

“Hey.”

Yuuri startles. The drifter staying at Phichit’s inn is leaning against the railing on the other side of the bridge, face as impassive as ever. Otabek Altin. Phichit says he’s clean and quiet, which ring true to every interaction Yuuri’s ever had with him, even though he seems to exist in a permanent state of leather and distance. Somehow even with a guy like him staying in the village Yuuri is still the main topic of gossip. How? Yuuri is permanently covered in dust and fertilizer and little burrs. He wears canvas pants he bought in college. He doesn’t know where his belt is.

“People would talk about you less if you slept more,” Otabek Altin says, arms crossed. “Everyone seems really worried about you. Yura tried to get me to give him a ride to Hasetsu so he could buy sleeping pills and hide them in your food.” A flash of guilt crosses his face and he uncrosses his arms uncomfortably, a secret obviously spilled.

Yuuri gives it a pass. “Insomnia runs in my family.”

Otabek doesn’t answer in the most judgmental way possible.

Yuuri packs up his catch and jogs back to the farm not long after Otabek leaves. When he passes the inn he sees a handwritten note hanging from the upper balcony attached to Phichit’s bedroom.

 _Yuuri if you see this sign GO TO BED_.

He goes.

* * *

On Yuuri’s second day in Ariura, he lets Auntie Minako take him around to the main places of interest. He meets Phichit Chulanont and promises not to judge his inn too unfavorably against Yu-Topia Akatsuki. (He lies. Yu-Topia is clearly superior in every way, but the comparison is unfair. Phichit’s inn isn’t an onsen.) He meets Christophe Giacometti, owner of the Blue Bar and incorrigible flirt. He meets Emil Nekola, who lives in a yurt.

Minako saves the Nikiforov Villa for last.

“The village was down to a couple hundred people until all the gaijin moved in,” she explains as they turn off the main road and onto a strangely grand avenue lined in white cobblestones and ornate gas lamps. “There was an article a few years back. A listicle. Ariura was mentioned and now we have a villa.” There is a distinct note of distaste in Auntie Minako’s explanation, which surprises Yuuri, since she seemed to enjoy Phichit and Emil and Chris’s company. (Especially Chris, which Yuuri will manfully not think about for as long as he can, which will likely span all of forever.)

The reason for Auntie Minako’s distaste makes himself apparent once they approach the mansion at the end of the short avenue. Its grand decorative doors fling open before Auntie Minako can even knock, revealing a large brown dog and another foreigner.

Yuuri doesn’t notice the foreigner for a few minutes, because as soon as it sees him the dog tackles him bodily to the ground. It sits on his chest and licks his face and wags its tail and whines happily. Yuuri never wants to leave that spot. Yuuri wants to live for sixty more years and die cuddling this strange brown dog, sitting on his ass in front of a European villa in the middle of the mountains in Saga. He feels this way strongly until he catches the edge of the terse conversation Auntie Minako is having with someone who isn’t the dog, or him.

“…be watching you,” Auntie Minako finishes with a grumble.

“It’s wonderful as always to see you Miss Okukawa,” the foreigner replies. Yuuri takes him in.

He’s tall and pale and richly dressed.

He’s handsome.

Yuuri wonders if he can hide behind the dog long enough to run away before the foreigner notices him.

“Welcome to Ariura, Yuuri,” the foreigner says with a grin set to stun. So much for running away. “My name is Viktor. Please feel free to visit me whenever you like.” He extends his hand and winks.

Yuuri runs away anyway.

* * *

Auntie Minako, Yuuri later learns, doesn’t like Viktor because, “he tries too hard. That’s all. He tries too hard to be charming and it gets on my nerves.”

Yuuri is of the opinion that Viktor _is_ charming, from the top of his forehead to the bottom of his RNA, but Yuuri would rather go to bed at a reasonable hour than admit that out loud. Instead he nods and promises to call his parents and tell them he isn’t being charmed by foreigners. But when he does call home he gets Mari instead of his mother, and somehow the conversation turns to how he’s being charmed, because he’d rather talk about that with her than how he doesn’t sleep or how he doesn’t know what he’s doing or how he’s afraid he’s going to fail again, and he gets embarrassed all the same.

Somehow she still knows the rest of it. Mari’s always been good at that.

“Take care of yourself over there,” Mari drawls through the phone line, a physical corded landline Auntie Minako had installed in the shed for some reason, which Yuuri has to use because his cell reception is spotty at best. “Send me pictures before you pick your favorite European boyfriend.”

“I could date Phichit,” Yuuri grouses, “he’s not European.”

“And that is exactly why you won’t,” Mari laughs. The shed is attached to the barn. Yuuri can hear his cows and sheep judging him through the thin aluminum siding. Outside the chickens laugh as they scratch at the ground, looking for bugs. “Unless he’s tall and blonde. Is he?”

“ _Mari_!” Yuuri gasps, even though she isn’t exactly wrong.

* * *

When winter rolls around Yuuri has even more time on his hands for not sleeping. There’s no point to spending much time in the fields. The fish have all but left the river. His livestock enjoys his company, but after five hours brushing down his horse and every sheep one afternoon he starts to think maybe he’ll never get the barn smell out of his hair.

He tells Auntie Minako he’s worried about making ends meet.

She sits him down with her ledger, compares his first year to hers, and hugs him and kisses his temple and tells him she’s always there to help.

He sets a trap for the sprites one snowy night. He disables it almost immediately, and leaves out a plate of rice balls in a fit of extreme guilt. They’re gone the next morning, surrounded by trackless snow. Yuuri begins to question his perception of reality again, except he finds a small, bedraggled puppy in the snow next to his barn and after that he forgets everything else he was going to do that morning.

“Yuuri?” Viktor wanders up the path a few hours later, bundled up like he’s looking for a ski resort instead of strolling through a village that doesn’t have its own bank or grocery store or gas station. Makkachin bounds along next to him, as always. “Yuuri, who’s that?”

The shivering puppy in Yuuri’s arms squirms and wriggles and fights to jump out of Yuuri’s arms so it can greet the larger dog. Together they roll through the snow and bark and playfully nip at each other’s tails. Yuuri and Viktor watch, amused.

“He’s mine,” Yuuri says once the puppy, satisfied, retreats to his arms. “I named him Vicchan.”

“Oh?” Viktor smiles, ears bright pink. Yuuri can see what Auntie Minako means, sometimes, about Viktor being too charming for his own good. He still likes it.

“Yes,” Yuuri runs his hand along Vicchan’s back softly. “Because he’s ridiculous.”

Viktor pouts and Makkachin jumps, and across the pasture Auntie Minako shouts that she and Chris are having an early lunch at the inn, and would Yuuri like to join?

The winter sun is cold.

Ariura is a small town. Smaller than small, a village with only one proper road.

“How does lunch sound?” Yuuri asks Viktor, setting Vicchan back down on the ground next to Makkachin.

They walk together towards the inn. Yuuri’s worked hard this year. Lunch sounds just about right. Lunch, and then a nap after. He could use a rest.

**Author's Note:**

> In HM: AWL the player character would get tired if you didn't make him sleep every day or so. But! It also had a glitch that let you get around this if you reset the console partway through sending your character to bed. It would be super pointless to go through all this trouble just to fully maximize the time you had available to farm and collect things you could sell, thereby increasing the net worth of your fictional farm. Right? Right???? Yuuri's insomnia is based on that glitch.
> 
> Ariura was a village that merged with another village into the town of Genkai in the 1800s. Genkai is next to Karatsu and is the only town in its district. I totally would have made a Hasetsu fake name for Genkai if I knew how to do that with Japanese names.
> 
> The sprites are def Minami and Co from the Yuuri fanclub.
> 
> Summary is a quote from the beginning of the game.
> 
> Also: HM:AWL was developed by Victor Interactive Software, which makes me think of technology AUs where Viktor is Yuuri’s AI boyfriend. But I digress.


End file.
